Perfectly Correct. Philippa Gregory
PROMPT, anxious that Louise should not have broken her promise and moved the old woman on. Before he let himself in at the front door he put down the packages on the doorstep and went quietly down to the caravan in the orchard.
The old woman was sitting in her doorway, face turned upwards to the weak morning sunshine. She smiled at him when she saw him but she did not move. The dog raised his head and lifted his ears and gave a soft warning growl.
‘Hush,’ the old woman said gruffly.
At once the dog dropped down to watch Toby in silence.
‘I’ll come and talk to you later,’ Toby said. ‘If I may.’ He smiled his most charming smile. ‘I’m longing to hear about your childhood. Could you spare me some time this morning?’
The old woman looked thoughtful. ‘I promised her I’d leave,’ she said regretfully. ‘She doesn’t want me in her orchard. I should be moving on today. I’m about ready to get packed.’
Toby let himself through the gate, the words spilling out in haste. ‘Oh, don’t go, don’t go. There’s no need for you to go. I’ll talk to Louise. She doesn’t really want you to go. You needn’t leave for a week or so. I promise.’
The old woman smiled at him. ‘As you wish,’ she said gently. ‘I’d rather stay. I’ve some problem with the van that needs sorting. Mr Miles’ll do it for me. I could get it fixed here and then move on later.’
Toby nodded. ‘You do that. I’ll be out later. In about an hour.’
The old woman graciously assented. ‘All right, then. I’ll be here.’
Louise, watching the two of them from her bedroom window, wondered what Toby wanted with the old woman. If it had been Miriam seeking her out then Louise would have known that she had found her a settlement place, a bed in a refuge, a council site. But Toby – Toby never did anything for anyone but himself.
Louise slipped into bed and arranged herself attractively on the pillows as the front door opened and Toby’s footsteps sounded on the stairs.
‘Darling,’ he said as he came into the room and laid the Guardian on her white counterpane. ‘Darling.’
‘The old woman’s van has got some mechanical problem,’ Toby said after he had made efficient but perfunctory love to Louise, unpacked the croissants and drank coffee, all in a rather bohemian mess in Louise’s wide white bed.
Louise watched him, her eyes hazy with post-coital content.
‘She told me Mr Miles would fix it for her if she could stay a few more days. I said I was sure you’d let her.’ Toby put on his little-boy-pleasing face. ‘I was sure you wouldn’t really mind.’
‘I do mind,’ Louise said abruptly. ‘I don’t want her here. I didn’t ask her to come here. And I particularly dislike the way she interferes. She talks to you, she watches my front door and knows when you’re here. God knows what arrangements she has in there for hygiene. Mr Miles has a thousand empty fields. If she’s on such good terms with him, why doesn’t she go up there?’
Toby reconsidered rapidly. As long as he knew where the old woman was, it would actually be more convenient if she were not on Louise’s doorstep. A casual remark from her about Sylvia Pankhurst, and Toby’s research would have to be shared with Louise, and the rewards shared too. But if she were safely housed away from Louise then he could develop the interviews at a leisurely, appropriate pace, and Louise would not find out about it until he had a contract from a publisher and an exclusive agreement with the old lady.
‘That makes sense,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you ask Mr Miles? He owes you a favour for breaking the fence.’
‘I’ll phone him,’ Louise decided. ‘I’ll phone him this morning.’
Toby got dressed slowly while Louise showered for the second time that morning and then emerged from the bathroom rubbing her hair dry with a towel. He cleared the breakfast things away while she dressed and when she came downstairs he was washing up.
‘Thank you,’ she said, slightly surprised.
Toby shrugged off her thanks. ‘You’ve got enough to do. I want to see this problem with the old lady solved before I go to work. Call Mr Miles now, I can help him move her.’
Louise gave Toby a long level scrutinising look. ‘Thank you,’ she said again. She dialled the number on the kitchen telephone. It rang for a long time and when Andrew Miles picked it up he was breathless from running from the yard.
‘It’s Louise Case. I’m sorry to trouble you but I have a problem here.’
‘Oh aye,’ Mr Miles said cautiously. Louise had telephoned him when her septic tank overflowed, when her rainwater drains had blocked and flooded her study, when her water-pipes froze, and when the coal merchant had failed to deliver her coal. To all these minor crises Mr Miles had responded as a good neighbour, and graciously received Louise’s envelopes containing excessive amounts of cash. But he had learned that Louise’s charm – to which he was deeply susceptible – generally indicated work which needed doing at once, often in the middle of lambing.
‘I have this old woman camping in my orchard,’ Louise said.
‘Well, you would,’ Mr Miles replied. ‘It’s May.’
‘Is that her name?’
‘The month. She always camps in your orchard in May. June she goes on to Cothering Farm. Every year.’
Louise exhaled her rising irritation. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Oh, yes.’
Mr Miles seemed to think the call had ended. He was about to put down the telephone.
‘Wait!’ Louise said urgently. ‘I want her moved.’
There was a shocked silence.
‘She can’t stay here, there are no…facilities. She has a dog, and she needs wood for her stove. She’s right at the bottom of my garden!’
Mr Miles sighed.
‘Surely you have a corner of a field or somewhere she could go?’ Louise asked plaintively. ‘All those fields of yours are empty.’
‘Hay,’ Andrew Miles said succinctly. ‘Those empty fields are hay meadows. They are not empty. They are growing hay. You can’t put a van on a hay crop.’
‘Somewhere there must be a corner for her?’
‘She can come if she likes. But she’s always stayed in your orchard before. She was born there.’
‘Will you come down and tell her?’
‘I’ll come down just before dinner,’ Andrew Miles said grudgingly. ‘But I doubt she’ll listen to me.’
‘Not until tonight?’
‘Dinner midday.’
‘Thank you,’ Louise said. But he had already hung up.
Andrew Miles’s Land-Rover pulled up behind Toby’s clean white Ford Escort and coughed to a standstill. Louise came out of the front door, Toby behind her. Louise introduced the two men. Andrew looked over Toby with one brief, encompassing glance. Toby in his turn saw a man in his middle forties, weathered into a broken-veined tan. A tall man, all bone and muscle with beaky hard features and a pair of hard blue eyes. His thinning fair hair was crushed down by a flat cloth cap with the shine of age on the peak. He was wearing working trousers very unlike Toby’s well-cut chinos, and a brushed cotton coloured shirt with the nap worn away at the collar.
‘Well, then,’ he said.
Louise led the way down the garden to the orchard gate. ‘Hello!’ she called.
The old woman poked her head out of the van door and looked at the three of them. She nodded to Andrew